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Penn State hasn’t officially announced this, but it’s painfully obvious: Bill Belton is wearing a jersey, but he’s wearing sweats and standing in the end zone watching his teammates warm up. He will not play today.

A source told our good friend Rich Scarcella of the Reading Eagle that Belton was sick throughout the week. It looks like the Nittany Lions’ leading rusher will have to sit this one out because of it.

The immediacy of Twitter. The ramblings of a man presumed to be conflicted. The magic and mystique of April Fool’s Day. The paranoia of a fan base waiting for the next kick in the gut.

Man, what a combination.

Just before midnight last night, Penn State running back Bill Belton sent a series of cryptic tweets on his Twitter account*, and it didn’t take a member of the Nittany Lions football inner circle to read between the lines: He evidently was leaving Penn State.

“Everything happens for a reason,” read one.

“Better opportunities for me,” said the next.

“Picking up and leaving is the toughest thing to do,” he followed.

And finally, the kicker: “It’s all for a better future how can you be mad at me for trying to better myself.”

A lot of people didn’t laugh, and Belton even made note of that, saying something afterward about how surprised he was at how some people reacted.

I know, judging by some of the people asking me what was going on, that fans and reporters and the like did not think this was particularly funny. I did, though. What can I say, maybe I’m a weird guy? But let me just mention two things here:

1.) It was pretty obvious early enough that this was very likely an April Fools prank.

2.) I think, sometimes, we need to let this particular group of kids blow off some harmless steam every once in a while.

As my colleague Nate Bauer tweeted, these kids hear this garbage about “Are you transferring?” and “Do you think your teammates will transfer?” all the time. All the time. I know they hear it from reporters after games, during media days, on phone conferences, etc. I’m sure they also hear it from fans. It has got to get old. It has got to get tiresome. It has got to get frustrating.

You have to understand, these are kids who didn’t sign up for this constant scrutiny when they decided to go to Penn State. Not one of them. Especially the junior class, a group of terrific players who are going to get a Penn State experience different than any other group that has ever played football here. Players come to Penn State to play in bowl games and compete for championships, and no matter how well these kids play, they’re going to leave with one appearance in the TicketCity Bowl — if they were lucky. None of this has been fair to them. The situation was thrown at them like a wrecking ball at a dilapidated building. There’s nothing they could have done to prevent anything that has gone on. They were punished for another man’s sins and told to take it or leave it.

And despite great odds and in the face of everything the national media believed would happen, the overwhelmingly vast majority of these kids just took it. And they’re still taking it. Which for Penn State, says something.

But the other end of the spectrum is that, by taking it, there is some frustration and some aggravation that has to be worked through. Imagine beating Wisconsin on a last second field goal then being asked how many of your teammates you thought would leave the program in the offseason. I’d be upset too if I were those guys. Is it part of the deal now? I guess. Are the transfer questions fair? I guess. But when an easy opportunity like this comes along to mess with some people, that’s got to be difficult to pass up. To hear people criticizing him, or suggesting that Bill O’Brien is going to demand Twitter accounts be shut down by every player on his team so this never happens again? Come on…really? Get a grip.

So, because of all this, I laughed. I got a kick of out old Billy Belton pulling a fast one on some people. And I hope those people can look back and laugh at it, too. I understand the argument that he didn’t have to do it. But hey, I didn’t have to stand the 5-foot-tall Big Bird balloon in my 15-year-old’s bathroom the other night, hoping it gave him the scare of his life when he went to use it at 2 a.m. But I did it anyway.

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